Civil War Encounters Touring the West: Part 6 – Montana
In 2023 my wife Brittany and I took a road trip out west where we encountered numerous Civil War sites in Salt Lake City, Utah; in Virginia City, Nevada; in San Francisco, California; in Fort Bragg, California, and at Fort Klamath, Oregon. This summer we took another road trip to Montana and Alberta to look at the Rocky Mountains, national parks, and glaciers. Returning from Canada to Montana at the conclusion of our trip, we managed to find and made time to see a couple of Civil War sites in the Big Sky State.
Our trip involved two Civil War stops in one day. The first was a stop at Montana’s capitol building in Helena, where the statue of a Civil War veteran sits prominently in front of the building. The second was to the 1860s capital city of Virginia City.
Montana is not the place people think of with the US Civil War, but much happened there because of the conflict. In 1863, gold was discovered near what is Yellowstone National Park, and a town quickly formed there. Many of the town’s founders were Southerners, with some even Confederate soldiers who were captured in Missouri and given the choice of prison camps or exile west. Those founders wanted to name their town Varina City, honoring Jefferson Davis’s wife, but a loyal judge simply crossed that name out on paperwork and replaced it with Virginia City (not to be confused with Virginia City, Nevada).
By 1864, there were 10,000 people in and near Virginia City, and that year the area was split from the recently formed Idaho Territory to form Montana Territory. Upon its formation, the whole territory was only 15,000 people. Virginia City was soon after made the territory’s capital.
After the war, many homesteaders moved to Montana, swelling the population. Among those traveling up the Missouri River was Brig. Gen.Thomas Francis Meagher. Having commanded the famed Irish Brigade until 1863 and commanded an ad-hoc division in the Western Theater in 1864, Meagher was appointed Montana’s secretary in 1865. The position was an administrative one supporting the governor, but one of power and influence as well; Mark Twain’s brother held the same post in Nevada during the war.
Meagher moved to Virginia City where, in 1866 and 1867, he twice became acting governor when the appointed man was east coordinating settler travel or speaking with leaders in Washington. In that capacity Meagher invented the territory’s first militia force. Meagher died in 1867, when he fell overboard on a steamer on the Missouri River. Some say it was a Confederate veteran getting revenge, some say it was suicide. Others call it an accident.
Meagher’s body was never recovered, but the government later erected a statue honoring him at the capitol building in Helena to honor the man. Surrounding the equestrian statue are quotations from Meagher.
Not even a mile from Meagher’s statue is the site where another Civil War monument once stood. In 1916, the United Daughters of the Confederacy erected a fountain monument honoring Confederate veterans. It was in Hill Park. In 2020, that monument was removed and replaced with a new monument called Equity Fountain, which remains in the park today.
Brittany and I stopped by both the Meagher statue and Hill Park before getting back on the road. We then set our sight on Virginia City. We arrived there in the afternoon. Today the town holds just a couple hundred residents, but still maintains many original buildings and has a lot to see for such a small location. Among the places we saw were Thomas Francis Meagher’s house and Stonewall Hall, a two-story structure that held a bar on the first floor and housed the territorial legislature on the second. The hall’s name could come from two origins: either it was named to honor Confederate Lt. Gen. Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, or it was named that simply because it was the first real stone building in Virginia City.
Before leaving Virginia City, we stopped at a general store packed with books, and I managed to get several related to Montana in the Civil War.
This ended our brief sojourn from the mountains and national parks to see Montana’s Civil War history, and from Virginia City, we made our way to Bozeman and our flight back to Texas.
Further Reading on Montana and the Civil War:
- Larry Barsness, Gold Camp: Alder Gulch and Virginia City, Montana (New York: Hastings House, 1962).
- Ken Robison, Montana Territory and the Civil War: A Frontier Forged on the Battlefield (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2013).
- Ken Robison, Confederates in Montana Territory: In the Shadow of Price’s Army (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2014).
- Ken Robison, Yankees & Rebels on the Upper Missouri: Steamboats, Gold, and Peace (Charleston, SC: The History Press, 2016).
Interesting post, Neil. And a statue of Meagher in Montana no less. What were some of his sayings that were on the statue’s base? “Pass the ammunition and the bottle, boys.”
Interesting report. One would not expect to find much Civil War connection with Montana…
Wagoner Samuel K. Fishel of the 12th Iowa Volunteer Infantry achieved his rank in 1862, a promotion from Private, after surviving the Battle of Shiloh. He spent the rest of his war hauling equipment and collecting supplies for the 12th Iowa, supporting its many Western Theatre engagements. And at the end of 1864, his 3-year term of enlistment expired, and he was discharged.
Upon return to Iowa, Samuel Fishel found plenty of work, mostly as farm labour, with all military age men away fighting the Confederates. But he found repairing barns and mending fences tedious and unsatisfying, and after a while he drifted west: GOLD had been discovered in Montana Territory. As with most rushers, Samuel Fishel found nothing to write home about. But he did like living in Big Sky country; he eventually found his calling, working as scout at what would become Yellowstone National Park.